A while back we published a column in which I talked about my delight in the many names of kinds of apples, and mentioned Louise Bogan's marvellous mid-century poem 'The Crossed Apple'. Here's yet another fine apple-name poem for my collection, by Susan Rothbard, who lives in New Jersey.

THAT NEW

by Susan Rothbard

At the market today, I look for Piñata
apples, their soft-blush-yellow. My...

Here's a short but loaded poem by a six-year-old from South Carolina, Jo'lene Dailey, from RYPA, the Rattle Young Poets Anthology. Rattle is a prominent literary journal. How many children have felt t...

I suppose there have been other poems about a baby's first look at and into the world, but they couldn't be more touching than this, by Faith Shearin, who lives in West Virginia, and whose most recent...

We've been selecting poems for this column for more than ten years and I can't remember ever publishing a poem about a cat. But here at last is a cat, a lovely old cat. Ron Koertge lives in California...

Garrison Keillor has used a number of George Bilgere's poems on The Writer's Almanac, and I've used several in this column, and it seems neither of us can get quite enough of this writer's clear, hone...

The workings of memory are something that every writer thinks a lot about, and in this poem Peter Everwine, a California poet we've featured before, looks very closely into those workings. His most re...

Barbara Crooker, who lives in Pennsylvania, has become one of this column's favorite poets. We try to publish work that a broad audience of readers can understand and, we hope, may be moved by, and th...

Nick Norwood's most recent book is Gravel and Hawk, published by Ohio University Press. This poem has sorrow at the top and happiness at the bottom, which means there's a lot of living in between. It'...

Here's a poem by Debra Nystrom about what it feels like to be a schoolgirl in rural America. No loud laughter echoing in the shopping mall for these young women. The poet lives in Virginia and this is...

I'd guess that many of us like old toys. As a boy I had a wind-up tin submarine that dove and surfaced, and a few years ago I saw one just like it in the window of an antique store, making me, of cour...

Stuart Dybek was born in Chicago, where there are at least a couple of hundred hotels a poet might stroll past, looking up at the windows. Here's a poem from his book, Streets in Their Own Ink, from F...

Sylvia Ross is from California's Chukchansi people, and this poem, from the anthology Red Indian Road West (Scarlet Tanager Books), is as moving a description about the lasting warmth of hand-me-downs...

Roy Scheele, one of Nebraska's finest poets, has a new chapbook called The Sledders: Thirty Sonnets, from Three Sheets Press. One of any writer's most valuable tools is memory, and this poem shows it ...

Readers of this column have probably noticed how much I love poems that give us new ways of looking at things, and in this example Faith Shearin does just that. I especially like "four-legged relative...

Here's a fine, deftly made poem by Meg Kearney, of New Hampshire, in which the details deliver the emotions, which are never overtly named other than by the title. It's my favorite kind of poem, and i...

As children, just about everyone has experienced the very real fear of an imaginary monster. But what if our mothers could have spoken to our childhood fears? Carrie Shipers of Wisconsin, the author o...

We hope that you will visit, from time to time, our archived columns at www.americanlifeinpoetry.org, where you may find other poems by the poets we feature. Today's is the third we've published by Sh...

There's an old joke about a truck with a five-ton licence and ten tons of canaries on board. The driver had to keep getting out and banging his fist on the side to keep half the canaries flying. Here ...

This past autumn, pruning a big lilac bush, I found a snakeskin that some bird had woven into its nest. Here's a poem about another find, from Stephen Behrendt, who lives and teaches in Nebraska. His ...

Faced by a loss, and perhaps by a loss of words, many of us find something to do with our hands. Here's a poem about just that by Arden Levine, published in 2015 in an issue of Agni magazine. Ms Levin...

At some moment every day I call up a memory of one or another of my family members who have passed on, so I was especially taken with this poem by Tim Nolan, who lives in Minnesota. His forthcoming bo...

Pat Emile is assistant editor and Jill-of-all-trades for this column. Were it not for her help I couldn't keep these weekly selections coming. Here she is in another role, as a poet, stopping in a lit...

Early each spring, Nebraska hosts, along a section of the Platte river, several hundred thousand sandhill cranes. It's something I wish everyone could see. Don Welch, one of the state's finest poets, ...

I can't help wishing that dogs lived as long as we do. I have buried a number of them, and it doesn't get any easier. In fact, it gets harder. Here's Mark Vinz, a Minnesota poet, from his book Permane...

My father spent his life in the retail business, and loved almost every minute of it, so I was especially pleased to see this poem by David Huddle, from his new book, Dream Sender, from Louisiana Stat...

When I was a boy, because of the song, I thought there really was an Easter parade, but the Easters came and went without one. But here's a glimpse of just a little piece of a parade by Kim Dower, who...

Philip Terman is a Pennsylvania poet who, with his family, lives in a former one-room schoolhouse. And whenever there's a one-room schoolhouse you can count on just a little wilderness around it. This...

In my limited experience, mothering and worrying go hand in hand. Here's a mother's worry poem by Richard Jarrette, from his fine book, A Hundred Million Years of Nectar Dances. He lives in California...

I suppose some of the newspapers which carry this column still employ young people to deliver the news, but carriers are now mostly adults. I had two paper routes when I was a boy and was pleased to f...

After my mother died, her best friend told me that they were so close that they could sit together in a room for an hour and neither felt she had to say a word. Here's a fine poem by Dorianne Laux, ab...

It's said that each of us undergoes gradual change and that every seven years we are essentially a new person. Here's a poem by Freya Manfred, who lives in Stillwater, Minnesota, about the changes in ...

A friend told me recently that he tries to keep in touch with people he's known even though they don't put any effort into doing that themselves. Here's William Trowbridge, who lives in Missouri, maki...

This column is more than 10 years old and I've finally gotten around to trying a little origami! Here's a poem about that, and about a good deal more than that, by Vanessa Stauffer, who teaches writin...

The only passage of scripture that I know by heart is from Ecclesiastes: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the g...

I love to have people come up to me and say, "You'll never believe what I saw this morning," and then go on to tell me. It's their delight that I like so much. Here's a poem in that vein by Kevin Cole...